Mofo Day 5 - Greek Chickpea Soup

Another reason for hating the winter, flash photography.

Recipes pop up in all sorts of unlikely places. My pointer to this absolutely classic simple Greek staple came from Agricultural Biodiversity, a site which brings together all sorts of interesting things about humans, crops and the wild relatives that spawned them. Today a link there about the European Food Information Resource took me to a recipe file (it's a downloadable .pdf) where I found the recipe.

The original (on page 51) made far too much soup for two and I wanted to use the pressure cooker to reduce preparation time, so I soaked 500g chickpeas in hot water for two hours and then pressure cooked them at high for 20 minutes. Half the chickpeas were put aside for another dish and I continued with the remainder.

250g chickpeas (dry weight)
Water
1 large onion
70g Extra virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
15g (1 scant tablespoon) white flour
7g (1 heaped tsp) salt

Soak the dried chickpeas overnight (for about 12 hours) in a bowl of cold water, then rinse them thoroughly and place in an uncovered saucepan filled with water over high heat. When the water starts to boil, skim off the foam which forms on the surface and reduce the heat to a medium temperature.

After 10 minutes, add the onion and the salt (the onion is added at this early stage so that it can dissolve and blend into the soup). Add hot water as required during cooking so that the chickpeas don't dry out and stay "soupy".

Test the chickpeas whilst as they cook until they are soft. This will take about 2 hours. Or speed this step up by soaking the chickpeas in hot water for a couple of hours and then pressure cooking according to your pressure cooker's instructions. You can add the onion and salt to the pressure cooker at the start or in the next stage.

Take about a quarter to a third of the cooked chickpeas from the pan and mash them with a potato masher or stick blender. Return the chickpea pulp to the pan and stir in. Add the finely chopped onion and salt now if it's not already in the pan, and cook for a few minutes until soft. Bring the volume up to about 1 litre with more hot water if needed.

Mix the lemon juice and the flour in a bowl and add to the soup. The amounts in the original recipe are a bit odd, I think for 500g chickpeas as described it should be 30g white flour or two tablespoons. The flour both thickens the soup and helps the olive oil stay in suspension. The lemon juice is for flavour so adjust to taste but you'll need at least one whole lemon's worth. Allow the soup to cook for 15 minutes or so to cook the flour and meld the flavours.

Then add the olive oil and simmer for a few minutes more. It should be comfortingly thick and simple. Add some chopped green herbs if you like.

Serve, with bread, salad, olives, vegan cheese or whatever.